Recommendations :: Captain America: Turn on the Lights.

Back in the mid-1980's, when this ad first appeared, I thought this was, perhaps, the stupidest idea in the history of stupid ideas, and thus, was not really all that surprised when the production never went any further, really, than that ad. And with all the horror stories, runaway hubris, and mounting stupidity of The Thing that Would Not Die Before it Actually Kills Someone (a/k/a Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark) only reinforced that notion that super-heroes and musicals do not and should not mix -- until I caught Joe Johnston's Captain America last night.


I never in a million years would have predicted that this movie, post-transformation, would spend a ten to fifteen minute interval focusing on a hilarious barnstorming musical revue/bond drive where Cap spent the day punching Hitler in the face in front of a chorus line of high-kicking Busby Berkeley beauties to a hideously infectious diddy about the Star-Spangled Man with the Plan (written by Alan Menken) that has me shaking my head, and smiling like a blissed-out idiot, to head back to the chalkboard to rethink things for awhile on this whole super-hero musical thing. Just one of the many reasons that make Captain America a total blast and the most fun I've had at the movies in a long, long time.